Promise Ring
by Lucretia-Caseyandra
Summary: If fate insisted on taking everything she cared about away just when she was getting comfortable, could Max really be expected to keep caring? Post-FANG! Will Max move on from Fang's departure or give up on love altogether?


Gone. Gone. The word itself made her dizzy, numb. How was she supposed to think... or move? He had everything she was. He had her heart, any logic or sense she'd ever had. Now they were gone without even a real explanation with her true love as the thief. _Me being here puts the rest of you in danger._ What danger? What the hell does that even mean? He didn't even talk to her before he left. She had thought they were in love. He'd said he loved her in the letter, but if you loved someone, wouldn't you tell them something like that? _He was just trying to protect me, though, _Max thought_, he was trying to save me._

But with his last saving grace, he also left a curse. Max couldn't breathe, her lungs had been weighed down with tears and the throbbing of her heart every time it beat another time. Her heart. God, it was like she could feel it cracking under her pulse; every once and a while a piece altogether snapping off agonizingly. That was only now. Before, when she felt the first blow with his awful goodbye, the poor heart had been shattered under his scuffed sneaker. Now as the pieces collapsed off her not-quite-healed, tired heart, she found that the ache, like all injuries do, lost its stabbing, gasping pain, leaving behind an annoying throbbing.

Why was she doing this to herself?

Max's eyes flew open, gasping at the sudden pull to the present from the dept of her own mind. Blinking, she did a quick, reflexive scan of her body, flexing muscles here and there. Her fingers were wet. Looking down, her eyes widened as she noticed her nails piercing the skin on her palms and wrists. _When did that happen?_ She lifted her hands, wincing a bit, but easily able to ignore it; this was nothing.

Rather absently, she wiped her fingers on her torn jeans. She started to pull her hands away, but her right one got stuck on the denim. Her birthday ring... from _him._ Delicate and old looking, it sparkled a bit, little gold flecks glittered in the gem. _His eyes..._ Too reminded of him, she ripped the ring off furiously, pulling her hand free from her jeans and chaffing her finger. She held it too tightly in her left hand, glancing around herself for the first time. She flinched, her hand slackening and the ring falling into the dirt. The hawk cave. The same place he'd asked to meet her in twenty years. Twenty years.

Suddenly Max's resolve hardened and her personality changed in an instant. She smirked bitterly, bending down and picking up the ring again. She looked at it closely. It was made of a silver metal with a jade-green stone, flecked gorgeously with gold. She noticed that the ring had gotten small streaks of her blood on it from her fingers. This only made her even more certain of what she would do.

Tossing the ring in her hand lazily, Max strode to the edge of the cliff. She glanced at the green gem and brought it to her lips, kissing it. Then she held her hand with the ring straight out in front of her and, still smiling, dropped it off the edge. She watched it drop until even her hawk vision lost the falling jewel. _Maybe he'll find it when shows his face here in twenty years._

She was done. She'd never cry over the bastard one more time. It didn't matter if he loved her or even if she loved him. He left. He didn't even bother explaining exactly why he was leaving. He just decided to leave on the happiest day they had had in _years._ Everything was fine until he did that. Now he'd have to live with the consequences. She was finished grieving over something as mundane and replaceable as him. If he thought she would wait twenty years, danger or not, for him to come back to her, he never knew Max at all. Besides, her whole life was dangerous, even without him. But it really didn't matter where he was anymore, she wasn't going to go back to him again.

Because Max was done with second chances. It never worked in the past and will never work in the future. This was just Jeb all over again. Neither would get anywhere near her heart a second time. The barricade was up and she was invincible. Nothing can hurt you if nothing matters to you. When fate is this unforgiving, can you really be expected to continue caring, if what you care about is torn from you everytime you really get comfortable?

"Let's see you come back now, Fang." Max whispered, still looking over the edge. She took a single step into the air and fell, stretching out her wings only at the last second, almost too late to stop herself from the jagged rocks below. Max was gone. A brand new Maximum Ride in the girl's place. Gone, just like him.

**a/n: Lucretia here, if you couldn't tell by my morbid writing style. I didn't know that I had such a depressing view on all this stuff until i started writing here... Anyway this is just a one-shot I thought of randomly. I really do hate Fang for leaving. But, then again, who doesn't. Please review! Thanks for reading!**


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